SSAB and Vestre have started a collaboration, whereby the Norwegian urban furniture producer will be the first company globally using fossil-free steel to make a piece of furniture. Vestre will present the first collaboration project later this spring.
”It is fantastic to start this sustainability journey with Vestre since they share our goal of reducing the carbon footprint throughout the value chain. At the same time, the collaboration also shows the breadth of uses for our fossil-free steel”, says Thomas Hörnfeldt, Head of Sustainable Business at SSAB.
Vestre aims to push the development and transition to more sustainable materials and production methods, so as ultimately be able to offer a maximally sustainable product – something that more and more of today’s customers are demanding.
When we learned about the HYBRIT process and SSAB’s fossil-free steel, we immediately saw this as a big part of our solution towards a net-zero future. Early estimates show that converting all our steel to fossil-free could reduce our overall footprint by around 60 percent. We intend to be a driving force for demand for the fossil-free alternative, and as the prices of the EU’s mandatory carbon dioxide quotas increase, there will be increased pressure on the steel industry to also reduce carbon dioxide emissions, says Øyvind Bjørnstad, Chief Sustainability Officer, at Vestre.
SSAB aims to lead the global steel industry towards a carbon dioxide-free future. SSAB’s fossil-free steelmaking technology has developed f from the HYBRIT initiative (Hydrogen Breakthrough Ironmaking Technology), which SSAB launched in 2016 together with mining company LKAB and energy company Vattenfall. The technology replaces coal and coke, which are currently used in the blast furnace process, with hydrogen and fossil-free electricity.
